Complaint Handling in Small and Specialist Institutions: Insights from GuildHE

Smaller and specialist providers are an important part of the rich diversity of the higher education sector. They can be dynamic, innovative and agile institutions able to develop a real sense of community among their students and staff. 

Even in the best organisations things can, however, occasionally go wrong. The Office for the Independent Adjudicator for HE (OIA) describe complaints and academic appeals as a “valuable source of feedback and learning” enabling institutions to find ways to improve their services and academic decision making. 

Due to their size some smaller or specialist institutions can sometimes face particular challenges in relation to dealing with complaints and academic appeals, something I will be speaking about in more detail at the HE Professional Student Complaints Action Day on 23 November 2023. 

In this article, I explore some of the particular challenges smaller providers often face when it comes to handling complaints. I draw on insights from a recent survey of GuildHE institutions, comparing data across smaller institutions but identifying that even amongst smaller institutions there are differences based on their size.

Staff: It’s a Small World

A strong community between students and staff can be really important in terms of developing a sense of belonging. There can, however, be a flip-side: in an institution where everyone knows everyone, it can prompt a perception around the fairness of the process if something goes wrong. 

There are likely to be fewer complaints in smaller institutions due to the size of the student cohort but there can be practical challenges when they do occur. One challenge can be not having enough different senior staff that don’t know the student or the case to be involved in the various panels and appeals. 

We recently ran a survey of GuildHE institutions about their complaints and academic appeals processes with 23 institutions (out of 60 members) responding to survey. As part of the survey we explored whether respondents agreed with the statement that “it can be hard to find panel members that haven’t been involved in the case at an earlier stage”. Over half (53%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement and only 26% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 

GuildHE represents a range of institutions of quite different sizes – from those with about 12,000 students to an institution with 80 students - and so even amongst smaller institutions there can be differences. Those institutions with fewer students are likely to have smaller staff teams and so exacerbating the challenge. In the survey we had 13 responses from institutions with more than 2,500 students and 10 responses from those with fewer than 2,500 students. 

When looking at institutions with more than 2,500 students only 15% agreed with the statement and 43% disagreeing that they had difficulties recruiting panel members. This compares to 90% of those respondents in institutions with fewer than 2,500 students agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement. 

This suggests some interesting questions around how we support institutions in dealing with complaints and academic appeals. Some of these institutions have linked up with other similar institutions to provide panel members and this is why GuildHE has developed a pool of external investigators drawn from the membership on a reciprocal basis to support providers when there are conflicts of interest.

Representation: Supporting students through the process

Smaller institutions can often have smaller students’ unions with fewer specialist staff or even not having sabbatical officers. 

In a larger university students’ union, they often employ specialist student advisers to support students through the complaints process, providing expert advice and having handled many similar complaints over a number of years. In students’ unions in smaller institutions they may not have any staff or may only have volunteer students’ union officers. 

When looking at the question in the survey about how effective support, advice and representation from the students’ union was, overall 22% responded that it was very effective and 30% occasionally effective and 17% not very effective with 30% responding “not applicable”. 

There were, however, significant differences by size of institution. In those institutions with fewer than 2,500 students 60% responded that it wasn’t applicable with many of these responding that they don’t have a students’ union. Of the remainder 20% said that the students’ union advice and support offered wasn’t very effective and 20% that it was only occasionally effective and no one responding that it was “very effective”. 

In institutions with more than 2,500 students 42% said that this support, advice and representation was “very effective” and the same proportion responding that it was “occasionally effective” and only 15% responding that it wasn’t very effective.  

These smaller institutions have developed processes to help to overcome some of these perceptions. They are, for example, more flexible about allowing students to be accompanied by other students, with almost 70% of respondents agreeing that they allowed this. A third of respondents even appointed an independent member of institution staff, or allowed them to identify a staff member, to support the student.

Perceptions of fairness

I have pulled out just two elements about the staff sitting on panels and support for students from the students’ union. There will be many other elements feeding into student perceptions about the complaints processes, but I also wanted to touch briefly on the impact that size of institution can have on the perceptions of the fairness of complaints processes. 

In response to the question of whether students perceive panels to be fair 40% of respondents with fewer than 2,500 students agreed with the statement, with the remaining 60% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. However, in institutions with more than 4,000 students it increased to 63% agreeing or strongly agreeing that students perceived the processes to be fair with the remainder neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

I have flagged a number of challenges around dealing with complaints and academic appeals in smaller and specialist institutions but also highlighted that there may be particular challenges depending on how small the institution is. I look forward to exploring these and other questions in more detail at the Student Complaints Action Day.